Chapter 1430: Research on Manipulation (Part 13)

In Schiller's Mind Tower, the room of Arrogance was large and spanned two floors. The first floor was the living area and work area, and the second floor was the rest area.

Bruce often moved on the first floor, so he stepped into the room door with familiarity, kicked the carpet he had just stepped on backward with his heel, let the other edge of the carpet perfectly lock onto the threshold, and then stepped forward.

Schiller came to the bookshelf, took out two books and placed them on the table, walked into his own work area without looking back, put on his glasses, and while flipping through a stack of documents, said.

"I'm not sure what the reason is for your sudden interest in psychoanalysis, but I must remind you that psychology is a very young discipline, and those masters you know who founded schools aren't historical figures."

"If you expect historical sages to provide you with the wisdom of the ancients like masters of mathematics and physics, then you are overthinking it."

"Are you one of them?" Bruce sat on the sofa, and then he saw two cups on the coffee table. The degree of dryness of the residual red wine stains in the cups showed that the previous person had just left not long ago, so he asked, "Before me, did you have a guest?"

Schiller's hand flipping through the documents paused and said, "This has nothing to do with the topic of your visit today."

"Who is he? Greed?"

"No, a friend from afar."

Schiller walked over, placed the stack of materials he had flipped through from his memory bank in front of Bruce, didn't sit down, but walked to the desk in the work area and began to tidy up the things on it.

Bruce narrowed his eyes. He saw that on Schiller's desk were half-folded envelopes, neatly stacked letter paper, seals, and candles for melting fire lacquer, which proved that Schiller was writing a letter to someone before Bruce knocked on the door.

"What are you doing at Monsanto?" Schiller asked while pressing the creases of the just-folded envelope with his fingertips.

"Don't change the subject. How could you have guests other than another version of yourself?"

"The Dream World is a vast world. Anyone can come and go through it. Perhaps they suddenly discovered this tower during their journey, so they came in to sit for a while, and I happened to have time to entertain them."

"Another Batman?"

"Bruce." Schiller stood in front of the table, his fingertips still pressing on the envelope, but he looked up at Bruce and said, "I was originally happy that you took the initiative to ask me for learning materials. Now it seems that I still have too high expectations for your learning enthusiasm in psychology, which is like a chronic illness."

"Besides red wine, what else did he give you?" Bruce leaned on the back of the sofa, turned his head to look at Schiller, and asked.

"Half a mystery equation. Do you want to see it?"

"No interest. That's rotten."

Schiller tidied up the table and walked out from behind the desk. He sat opposite Bruce, but Bruce suddenly appeared somewhat hesitant for some reason. He seemed to have weighed it in his heart for a long time before asking, "Did you tell him about Thomas?"

"He should have seen it long ago."

"He saw everything." Bruce stared at Schiller's eyes with those deep blue eyes and said, "About me, about you, about Thomas, about this Gotham we are in, yet I know nothing about him."

"Are you accusing me of hiding certain things from him?" Schiller didn't appear angry; he just moved the two cups to one side, making it so there was no obstruction between him and Bruce.

Then he leaned his body forward, rested his forearms on his legs, clasped his hands together, and said, "You can understand it this way: he is another version of me, and originally he should also have been the future you."

"Someone has told me about this... Can I go pour a glass of water?"

Bruce stood up, came to the cup rack against the wall, picked up a cup, and then came to the side of the island, poured himself a glass of water from a kettle. He didn't return to the sofa to sit, but stood behind the island, seemingly using the things on the island as a barrier to separate him from where Schiller was.

"The future me will be a lunatic with a completely self-consistent logic, just like you, and you don't want me to become like this. Then what about him?"

Bruce put down the cup. He actually rarely said such a long paragraph to anyone else, it was just that the countless high-level discussions and point debates that had occurred in this room over the past few years made him very accustomed to his own voice constantly echoing in this space.

"If he said he also didn't want me to become him, then he is regretting, which shows that he is also not completely self-consistent. And if he said he hoped I would become him, then you shouldn't be so compatible."

"You have successfully found the logical loophole again." Schiller maintained his original posture, turned his head to look at him, and said, "Like a good detective, as always."

"You are very interested in the way the two of us get along, but I can tell you that, to some extent, this is the mutual interest of two mental patients. Therefore, we will not have a day of getting along like this, and there is no such necessity at all."

Bruce saw that Schiller's gaze was still very calm, just like when they discussed academic problems countless times. There was a vast ocean in those gray eyes, calm as if it would never ripple.

So, Bruce also calmed down, looked at Schiller, and said, "You talk to him as an equal, but you are always manipulating me. Compared to him, I seem to lack a layer of armor. What is that?"

"Why not go find it yourself?"

Bruce suddenly appeared somewhat irritable. He put down the cup with a heavier movement, making a soft "clink" sound.

Schiller stood up, walked to the other side of the island, rested his hands on the countertop, and said, "I knew I shouldn't have had any expectations for your learning enthusiasm, which is like a chronic illness. If it were before, I wouldn't have given you a hint."

Bruce raised his eyes to look at him.

"But you really don't have to cut your neck again."

Schiller poured himself a glass of water. Bruce took a deep breath and sighed, seemingly impatient with what he was about to say, so he said very briefly, "At the beginning, then, after that, finally I... I have said it many times."

"Well, I think you should try changing your perspective, for example, from being manipulated to being a manipulator."

"You should know that manipulating others is evil, right?"

"You are already evil enough."

Bruce paused for a moment and then suddenly laughed, his chest heaving rapidly, and then he looked at Schiller and said, "This is the only thing I have surpassed him in, right?"

"And also the most critical point." Schiller picked up the water glass, raised it toward Bruce, and said, "This kind of evil comes from me. My honor."

"Well, what should I do?"

Schiller shook his head and said, "The hint ends here, but based on my shallow knowledge of mathematics and physics, the half of the equation that the other Batman gave me might be related to some underlying rules of the universe."

Watching Bruce's back as he hurried out of the room, Schiller revealed a smile.

"So, it was you who hinted to Bruce from the beginning, so he formulated such a plan and hurriedly put it into practice?" Constantine, who had heard the whole process, said.

Then he sighed, "You actually used another Batman to stimulate him?... Well, our Bruce isn't entirely innocent either. Always young, always forgetting lessons."

"I don't mean to boast, but deceiving others or threatening others with violence are two completely different things." Schiller put down the wine glass, took another puff of the cigar, and then said, "I like to play with my cards face up."

"And then watch others, even if they see through your methods, because they cannot control the emotions you provoke, have no other choice, and can only helplessly and tangledly be led by you onto the path you want them to take. You take pleasure in this, right?"

"Partly so."

"Too evil."

"Only for smart people is it so." Schiller shook his head and said, "For stupid people who aren't smart enough, there is no helplessness and entanglement, only happiness, like that stupid girl Amanda."

"She has never thought about why she locked me in prison, implanted nano-controllers in me, and constantly offended me, yet I still kindly provided her with strategies to subdue dangerous criminals."

Schiller's expression seemed to contain some emotion about the rarity of a certain rare animal. He tapped the side of the cup with his finger and said, "Do you know? For people who are stupid enough, relying on me doesn't require paying any price. Those mental pains I often bring to people, as long as they can't feel them, they don't exist at all."

"For example, Amanda, she was eager to vent the pain and anger brought by her life experience on Elliot. I provided her with a strategy that allowed her to legitimately lock Elliot into the special confinement cell to torture him, and she felt it was very good."

"I recommended Bane, whom Deathstroke introduced to me, to her, and she gladly accepted my candidate. I said Gallardo would be a good bait, and she used her connections within the FBI to throw Gallardo, who had just escaped from Oliver's pursuit, into the designated cell."

"In the whole process, she didn't see any clues from any link, thinking that she was in control, and gained great satisfaction and happiness in this illusion."

Schiller revealed a smile, pinched the wine glass with the pale knuckles of his other hand, took a sip of wine, and said, "This is what I said: stupid people love any savior they can rely on. Only smart people want to kill gods."

"It's also pretty good, isn't it?" Constantine shrugged and said, "Being manipulated and controlled by someone much smarter than you isn't entirely a bad thing. At least Amanda is happy now."

"Smart people are mostly suffering for their long-term vision." Schiller slowly exhaled smoke and said, "For the short-sighted, what will happen tomorrow is always a mystery, so naturally they can focus entirely on today's happiness."

"But the suffering of smart people isn't unreasonable. Who can guarantee that what comes tomorrow must be a good thing? If bad things happen and stupid people have no value to be used, those short-lived happinesses will make them pay ten or a hundred times the price."

Constantine raised an eyebrow. He drank the good wine in the glass in one breath like cheap whiskey, coughed twice, and then said, "You think Amanda will suffer Bruce's revenge? But in the end, he heard your voice, so he should understand that Amanda is just a tool."

"Of course he understands." Schiller stood up, walked to the wine cabinet nearby, and picked up a bottle of wine, which meant this conversation was far from over.

Constantine sighed in his heart. Just as Schiller said, the manipulation from Schiller was face-up, but it made people unable to refuse. He wanted to get up and leave now, but how could he refuse the good wine Schiller privately treasured?

Schiller sat back on the sofa with the wine and the wine knife. While opening the wine knife, he said, "Theoretically speaking, Bruce doesn't need to care about Amanda."

"But it's a pity that, besides evil, Bruce's tolerance also comes from me." ===== CHAPTER 1431 =====